Sensor devices such as radar systems may be used to determine the position of a vehicle as it travels over a terrain. These sensor devices enable the vehicle to obtain approximations of the elevations associated with a geographic region of the terrain. Based on these approximations, the vehicle may detect and avoid large obstacles in its path or correlate with another source of data, such as a global positioning system (GPS), to identify its position.
While the use of sensor devices to help determine the position of a vehicle is effective, certain drawbacks exist. For example, GPS data may not be available for certain types of terrain, such as extra-terrestrial terrains. This prevents the vehicle from determining its position by correlating the data generated by the radar system with positioning data from a GPS. In addition, such systems do not provide a method that enables the vehicle to accumulate the data that is generated by the sensor device in order to generate a precise data representation of a geographic region of the terrain. Precise data representations of a geographic region of the terrain may be useful when the vehicle is landing in an unfamiliar location such as when a space module is landing on an extra-terrestrial surface.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a method and apparatus for determining the position of a vehicle in a GPS denied environment. In addition, it is desirable to provide a method and apparatus for accumulating data generated by a sensor device for the purpose of generating a precise data representation of a region of a terrain. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description of the invention and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background of the invention.